Monday’s “lactivist” protest on the front lawn of the Columbia County Justice Center certainly stirred passions.

Versions of the story appearing on Web sites for The News-Times and The Augusta Chronicle were heavily debated through reader comments.

The event wasn’t so much protest as it was an effort to raise awareness of an issue: The fear of breast-feeding mothers that they’ll be arrested if they nurse their children in public. It was part of a statewide “Nurse-In,” held in locations where it could get the most visibility.

The images of destruction from the record-setting number of tornados that blew through the Midwest and Southeast this past week are hard to fathom, and heart-wrenching.

More than three dozen people were killed in states from Illinois to Virginia, and through Alabama and Georgia. As the worst of the storm speared Friday evening through west Georgia, the line of the approaching front spanned all the way into our community.

With so much crime drama inexplicably taking place this past week in Columbia County, the Feb. 24 conviction and subsequent life sentence of Thomas Bradford for the murder of Raymond Lee might seem like ancient history.

Sure, there’s still a multi-million-dollar civil suit pending in the case. And no one would be surprised if appeals of Bradford’s murder conviction are forthcoming. But before the dust settles, there’s one nagging aspect of the case that shouldn’t escape comment.

Michael Starnes did it the right way. Monday morning, he saw a suspicious man walking around his neighbor’s home. Starnes got his gun, confronted the burglar and held him at gunpoint until Columbia County deputies arrived to make an arrest.

More good neighbors like Starnes would make the world a far safer place.

Thomas Bradford did it the wrong way. One man is dead as a result, and Bradford likely will spend the rest of his life in prison.

We’ve all heard this week about the five teens calling themselves the “Charlie Rape Gang.” Members of the “gang” briefly were suspended from Lakeside Middle School recently after complaints, and social media postings, that they had been corralling unsuspecting fellow students, holding them down and pretending to “rape” them.

One of the common excuses used by non-voters is that it isn’t convenient. Elections are held on Tuesdays, and work schedules get in the way.

The ability to vote by absentee long ago debunked that rationale. In addition, the state of Georgia in recent years further undermined that excuse by instituting early and advance voting days that stretched elections out for nearly a month before each election.

If a school principal had to give pupils a warning about their behavior prior to their bus leaving school, it’s probably a safe bet that those kids bear at least a little responsibility for that driver having to pull over and cool off during the ride home.

After that fateful ride last week, some Euchee Creek Ele-mentary parents complained about the driver’s behavior based on tales from their children. Some of that carries the self-serving whine of enabling.